FILM REVIEW; An American in Japan, Making a Connection

The director Sofia Coppola's new comic melodrama, ''Lost in Translation,'' thoroughly and touchingly connects the dots between three standards of yearning in movies: David Lean's ''Brief Encounter,'' Richard Linklater's ''Before Sunrise'' and Wong Kar-wei's ''In the Mood for Love.'' All three movies are, in their way, about a moment of evanescence that fades before the participants' eyes -- as is ''Translation.'' (''Translation'' also exhibits the self-contained, stylized lonesomeness found in post-punk, like New Order's ''Bizarre Love Triangle.'')

Ms. Coppola's movie also happens to be hilarious -- a paean to dislocated people discovering how alive they are when they can barely keep their eyes open. The sexiness comes from the busy, desperate need-to-impress heat of a flirtation, an unrequited love communicated through a filter of sleep deprivation.

''Translation,'' which opens today in New York and Los Angeles, is also one of the purest and simplest examples ever of a director falling in love with her star's gifts. And never has a director found a figure more deserving of her admiration than Bill Murray. He plays a vodka-and-bitters version of himself and the persona that made him famous. His character, Bob, is an American movie star who is in Tokyo to participate in the celebrity not-so-secret shame: he's picking up a boatload of dough to perform in commercials for Suntory whiskey. He arrives in Japan just in time to gaze, slightly embarrassed, at the sullen billboards of himself that are starting to appear there. While blinking sleeplessly around the lobby of the majestically hermetic Tokyo Hyatt, he meets Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), who has been abandoned by her photographer husband (Giovanni Ribisi); he's off shooting a band.

The movie follows the twists and connections in Bob and Charlotte's relationship -- like some trans-Atlantic phone calls, their feelings reach each other on a five-second delay. The lag time only embellishes the comedy, and the heartbreak.

It's the first grown-up starring part that Mr. Murray has had, and he inflects every facet of public awareness of Bill Murray with a sure, beveled determination. That may be because he has never really had a leading role that has asked him simply to pay attention to the other actors instead of guide the scene or save it.

Lean and physically witty -- because he has dropped the awareness of the audience's demand for mainstream comedy -- he even seems to be standing taller, perched on Bob's courtliness. Generally, Mr. Murray has given performances worth paying attention to in movies that no one sees, like his physical inhabitation of Hunter S. Thompson in ''Where the Buffalo Roam,'' perhaps the only film example extant of Mr. Murray's ability to depict vulnerability and physical threat simultaneously.

Here he supplies the kind of performance that seems so fully realized and effortless that it can easily be mistaken for not acting at all. The corollary of this is that Ms. Coppola's direction is so breezily assured in its awareness of loneliness that the film could potentially be dismissed as self-consciously moody rather than registering as a mood piece. But it's bound to be recognized as a movie worthy of the kind of Oscar attention occasionally given to films that challenge audiences subtly. Mr. Murray could collect the Academy Award that he didn't get for ''Rushmore.''

Here, his capacity for absorbing everything around him has taken a toll, and the visibility of that burden is what ''Translation'' is all about. The psychodrama in the phone calls from Bob's wife adds a chilling layer of passive-aggressive horror that makes you understand why he had to flee to Tokyo. But thanks to Ms. Coppola's gracefulness, those conversations don't overwhelm the movie; instead, they add texture.

As does Ms. Johansson's Charlotte. At 18, the actress gets away with playing a 25-year-old woman by using her husky voice to test the level of acidity in the air. Charlotte's husband has already stopped listening to her, and we can see that her pain is dulled by her exhaustion level. Ms. Johansson is not nearly as accomplished a performer as Mr. Murray, but Ms. Coppola gets around this by using Charlotte's simplicity and curiosity as keys to her character.

Being shut away from experience has made Charlotte even lonelier than Bob, and their relationship flowers because he is eager for experience, too. Ms. Coppola gives Mr. Murray a scene that actors dream of; he falls definitively for Charlotte as she struggles through a karaoke version of ''Brass in Pocket,'' a wisp of a smile flitting across his face as he watches her perform in a frosting-pink wig. She is his dream of an uncomplicated future, and Ms. Coppola lovingly shoots Ms. Johansson's wary, lazy eyes and lush lips -- almost as a parody of Japanimation.

Music is a big part of the director's life; Ms. Coppola's previous feature, a screen adaptation of ''The Virgin Suicides,'' was informed more substantially by the score by the group Air than by the narrative. She also allows Bob a chance to croon some karaoke, including a cover of Roxy Music's ''More Than This.''

Certainly we anticipate Mr. Murray's trashy sarcasm when he steps in front of a microphone, but we cringe slightly; if he whips Bryan Ferry's doomed narcissism around his throat like a scarf, the kind of thing he did when he invented this routine in the late 1970's on ''Saturday Night Live,'' he'll get his laugh and demolish the movie. Instead he renders the song with a goofy delicacy; his workingman's suavity and generosity carry the day. And ''Translation'' already has a joke of a hotel lounge singer, played by Catherine Lambert, who is used for a bigger laugh later.

A joy of filmmaking pervades the movie, and an instinctive understanding of the medium is evident. Sound is used so beautifully it takes your breath away; in a scene where Bob carries the dozing Charlotte to her room, the hotel corridor is gently dusted with aural density; the noise of air conditioners and fluorescent lights becomes a part of the milieu.

The director is more than ably complemented by her sound designer, Richard Beggs, as well as the cinematographer Lance Acord and the editor Sarah Flack. All of their skills can be glimpsed in a scene that ends with Bob and Charlotte fleeing a karaoke bar as a friend fires a toy pistol that shoots lighted pellets at them, the gun's rat-a-tat fading into the jangling of a pachinko parlor.

The movie conveys dislocation and the hungers it causes more than just visually. Perhaps because of that, ''Translation'' exists more as a film rendering psychological colorations than as a script. Obviously, Ms. Coppola placed all her trust in her actors. Anna Faris, who barely registers in the ''Scary Movie'' pictures -- and she's the star -- comes to full, lovable and irritating life as a live-wire starlet complicating Charlotte's life. Ms. Faris has already had work; this movie will secure her a career.

But as a result of Ms. Coppola's faith, this is really Mr. Murray's movie, and his respect for his director couldn't be more visible.

In the handful of films she has done -- including her short, ''Lick the Star'' -- Ms. Coppola has shown an interest in emotional way stations. Her characters are caught between past and future -- lost in transition. Perhaps her films are a kind of ongoing metaphorical autobiography, but no matter. The important point is that there's a lot up there on the screen, plenty to get lost in.

''Lost in Translation'' is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has sexual content as well as strong language and alcohol consumption.

LOST IN TRANSLATION

Written and directed by Sofia Coppola; director of photography, Lance Acord; edited by Sarah Flack; original music by Kevin Shields; sound designer, Richard Beggs, production designers, Anne Ross and K. K. Barrett; produced by Ms. Coppola and Ross Katz; released by Focus Features. Running time: 102 minutes. This film is rated R.

Correction: September 16, 2003, Tuesday A film review in Weekend on Friday about Sofia Coppola's ''Lost in Translation'' misspelled the given name of a director whose movie ''In the Mood for Love'' was cited as evocative of Ms. Coppola's work. He is Wong Kar-Wai, not Wong Kar-Wei. Correction: September 19, 2003, Friday A film review in Weekend last Friday about Sofia Coppola's ''Lost in Translation'' misspelled the given name of a director whose movie ''In the Mood for Love'' was compared with Ms. Coppola's, and a correction in this space on Tuesday reversed the relationship between the movies. The director is Wong Kar-Wai, not Wong Kar-Wei; it was Ms. Coppola's film that was described in the review as evocative of Mr. Wong's (which predated it by two years).